The American Literature Archive


Authors | Courses | Criticism | Gallery | Links | Periods | Works

PERIODS

Specific Periods:

  • American Literature Chronology: 16th & 17th Centuries. A good list of works on line and some author pages.
  • A Student's History of American Literature: 1607-1700. Part of Bibliomania: The Network Library, these pages offer a concise history of this period, geared more toward students than scholars.
  • Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings. This page is intended to make available to a wider audience the writings of the Puritans, Scottish Divines and other Reformed authors. Many of the sermons are in modern language. Featured authors include John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Richard Baxter, Samuel Rutherford, John Flavel, and many others.
  • The Puritans: American Literature (1608-1700). A listing of works on line and some biographical pages.
  • Salem Witch Trials. A very interesting site with lots of original documents, a chronology, and biographies -- maintained by Douglas Linder as part of his Famous American Trials site (includes Leopold and Loeb, The Scottsboro Trials, The Amistad Case, and many others). Also, a nice little site at the Salem Witch Museum. Includes FAQs about the trials.
  • Early American Literature: 1600-1900. The Internet School Library Media Center (ISLMC) American Literature page. The ISLMC is a meta-site at which teachers, librarians, parents and students can preview curriculum related materials. Contains sources of texts, biography, criticism and lesson plans for teachers of literature from the Colonial Period through the 19th century.
  • Early American Literature: 1620-1820. An extensive site of links maintained by Akihito Ishikawa, Professor of English at Nagasaki College of Foreign Languages in Japan. Includes Timelines, Authors, Related Resources, Music & Visual Arts, and Social Contexts.
  • American Literature Chronology: 18th Century. A good list of works on line and some author pages.
  • American Literature: 18th & 19th Centuries. Part of the "American Studies at UVa Yellow Pages," this page provides an eclectic, interesting, and well-researched series of resources on a large number of 18th- & 19th-century authors.
  • Archiving Early America. As Archiving Early America's Mission Statement explains, "Our main focus is primary source material from 18th Century America-- all displayed digitally. A unique array of original newspapers, maps and writings come to life on your screen just as they appeared to our forebears more than 200 years ago. As you browse through these original documents, you will find it easier to understand America's early residents, those who shaped and created the early Republic. These archival materials-- forming as they do an historical record of a significant time in the American experience-- are displayed in their original formats so they can be read and examined close-up....in detail. . . . Of special interest is the Maryland Gazette containing George Washington's Journal of his historic trip to the Ohio Valley. It is the only original copy privately held. Because of its historic significance and its rarity (most Americans are unaware of its existence), the March 21 and 28, 1754 issues of The Gazette can be viewed here in their entirety-- exactly as Washington wrote it, down to the last comma, apostrophe and period." Also contains the Early American Digital Library, which offers images available for use from the Keigwin and Mathews Collection of 18th and 19th century historical documents, a unique digital collection of portraits, battle scenes and views of early-day America, and The Early America Review, "A Journal of Fact and Opinion On the People, Issues and Events Of 18th Century America ."
  • A Student's History of American Literature: the 18th Century. Part of Bibliomania: The Network Library, these pages offer a concise history of this period, geared more toward students than scholars.
  • Eighteenth Century Resources. An extensive, searchable site maintained by Jack Lynch at Rutgers University. These pages cover all the significant and reliable Internet resources that focus on the (very long) eighteenth century. The collection includes information on literature, history, art, music, religion, economics, philosophy, and so on, from around the world, as well as the home pages of societies and people who work on eighteenth-century topics. The site is aimed especially at scholars and students.
  • From Revolution to Reconstruction -- A Hypertext on American History. A site constructed primarly from a number of US Information Agency documents, it provides a wealth of information about events, people, and places from 1776 to 1876.
  • American Literature: 1820-1865. An extensive site of links maintained by Akihito Ishikawa, Professor of English at Nagasaki College of Foreign Languages in Japan. Includes Timelines, Authors, Related Resources, Music & Visual Arts, and Social Contexts.
  • American Literature: 1865-1914. An extensive site of links maintained by Akihito Ishikawa, Professor of English at Nagasaki College of Foreign Languages in Japan. Includes Timelines, Authors, Related Resources, Music & Visual Arts, and Social Contexts.
  • American Literature Chronology: 19th Century (early). A good list of works on line and some author pages.
  • The Amistad Case. Part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), this site provides background and original documents from this seminal event in American history -- the substance behind Spielberg's Amistad and the backdrop to Melville's "Benito Cereno." From Douglas Linder's Famous American Trials website, a section devoted to the Amistad Trials, 1839-1840; an interesting site at Cornell Law School involving both the original Amistad case and the case against Spielberg's movie (can you copyright history?); and Mystic Seaport's site "Exploring Amistad," which looks at the Amistad Revolt of 1839-1842 and how we make history of it.
  • A Student's History of American Literature: the Beginning of the 19th Century. Part of Bibliomania: The Network Library, these pages offer a concise history of this period, geared more toward students than scholars.
  • A Student's History of American Literature: Philosophy and Romance. Part of Bibliomania: The Network Library, these pages offer a concise history of this period, geared more toward students than scholars.
  • A Student's History of American Literature: the General Literary Development. Part of Bibliomania: The Network Library, these pages offer a concise history of this period, geared more toward students than scholars.
  • The Transcendentalists. An award-winning "Athens Web Ring" site, it contains useful links, works by, and information about both major and minor figures in the Transcendalist movement, as well as about Unitarianism and the "Heirs of Transcendentalism."
  • African American Women Writers of the 19th Century (Schomburg). Part of the Digital Collections of the New York Public Library and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, this site documents the extensive contributions to 19th century literature made by black women in America. Contains fiction, poetry, essays, biographies, and autobiographies.
  • American Literature Chronology: 19th Century (later). A good collection of works on line and author pages.
  • Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935. A very extensive site by Jim Zwick documenting this often overlooked part of American history. The Anti-Imperialism League counted Mark Twain and William James among its members and opposed American expansion in the Phillipines and the Spnish-American War.
  • American Literature: 20th Century. Part of the "American Studies at UVa Yellow Pages," this page provides an eclectic, interesting, and well-researched series of resources on a large number of 20th-century authors.
  • American Literature: 1914-1945. An extensive site of links maintained by Akihito Ishikawa, Professor of English at Nagasaki College of Foreign Languages in Japan. Includes Timelines, Authors, Related Resources, Music & Visual Arts, and Social Contexts.
  • American Literature: Since 1945. An extensive site of links maintained by Akihito Ishikawa, Professor of English at Nagasaki College of Foreign Languages in Japan. Includes Timelines, Authors, Related Resources, Music & Visual Arts, and Social Contexts.
  • American Literature Chronology: 20th Century. A good list of works on line and some author pages.
  • A Student's History of American Literature: the Threshold of a New Century. Part of Bibliomania: The Network Library, these pages offer a concise history of this period, geared more toward students than scholars.
  • 1930s Front Page. This site was created in June 1998 for the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia. It is a continuing project, with new sites and resources added as students and faculty complete new projects and improved technologies become available. It enables you to view the 1930s through the lenses of its films, radio programs, literature, journalism, museums, exhibitions, architecture, art, and other forms of cultural expression.
  • Later American Literature Links. An interesting list of works on line and author resources by Frederic Giacobazzi at Kirtland Community College.
  • The Modernist Journals Project. The MJP is a multi-faceted project, which is intended to become a major resource for the study of the rise of modernism in the English-speaking world, with periodical literature at the center of this study. As such, its historical scope has a chronological range of 1890 to 1922, and a geographical range that extends to English language periodicals, wherever they were published. With magazines at the center, the MJP also has a generic range that extends to the digital publication of books directly connected to modernist periodicals and other supporting materials for the study of these periodicals. At this stage of the MJP's development, however, the chronological range of periodicals extends only from 1904 to 1922.
  • Modern Literature (American). A good, general site of useful links and works online.
  • Modernism Timeline, 1890-1940. A useful year-by-year listing of publications, important events, inventions, and artistic productions during this fifty year period.
  • On Or About December 1910. Virginia Woolf famously observed that “on or about December 1910 human character changed” — by which she meant to locate the shift to modernism at the end of the reign of King Edward VII and the beginning of the reign of King George V. To assist teachers and students studying this transitional moment, the MJP offers images of individual issues of British and American periodicals from 1910 and 1911.


General Sites:

  • American Literature on the Web. An extensive site of links maintained by Akihito Ishikawa, Professor of English at Nagasaki College of Foreign Languages in Japan. Includes Timelines, Authors, Related Resources, Music & Visual Arts, and Social Contexts.
  • American Memory from the Library of Congress. American Memory is the online resource compiled by the Library of Congress National Digital Library Program. With the participation of other libraries and archives, the program provides a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. Over one million items from the LOC historical collections are currently available online. In the coming years, the National Digital Library Program plans to digitize more of the Library's unique American history collections and make them freely available to teachers, students, and the general public over the Internet. Special collections to be digitized include the documents, films, manuscripts, photographs, and sound recordings that tell the American story. Exhibits range from the 1562 Map of America to "Southern Mosaic," a multiformat ethnographic field collection that includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States by John and Ruby Lomax, beginning in Port Aransas, Texas, on March 31, 1939, and ending at the Library of Congress on June 14, 1939.
  • The Best of the Web: American Literature. A developing site that lists links by author, period, and general interest.

  • The Heath Anthology of American Literature. A site designed both to supplement and to complement The Heath Anthology. Contains a particularly good set of Reader Resources, organized chronologically by author, time period, and thematic connection.
  • The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. Includes historical maps of the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Texas and the US; a site that archives map images on the web at the WWW Virtual Library at the Institute of Historical Research, London; and an archive of historical map web sites at UT.
  • A Student's History of American Literature. Part of Bibliomania: The Network Library, these pages offer a concise history of specific periods and authors, geared more toward students than scholars.
  • The Norton Anthology of American Literature. A site designed both to supplement and to complement The Norton Anthology. Organized by Periods (with a useful chronolgy of "contexts" alongside an historical listing of texts and authors), Authors, Topics, and "Explorations" -- a means of "exploring" an author through study questions and annotated links.


Authors | Courses | Criticism | Gallery | Links | Periods | Works

Please e-mail me to let me know if any links are broken.